DNA Sample from Anthony Sowell Lost

Anthony Sowell gave a DNA sample when he was in prison in the 1990s. Unfortunately, that sample was lost. It was sent to a private lab in Fairfax, Virginia, but was never returned to the State of Ohio.

Said Eve Mueller, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Mike DeWine:

I don’t know if it got lost in the mail or if it got lost in the Virginia lab. Nobody knows what happened to it after that.

Sowell was then in prison serving a 15-year sentence for attempted rape.

As a result of the sample being lost, Sowell’s DNA profile was never entered into the national database. If it had, it’s possible that investigators might have been lead to Sowell earlier.

The lab, Fairfax Identity Labs, is owned by Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc., which did not return calls or emails from the newspaper investigating the incident. The State of Ohio’s contract with the lab ended in 2006.